With more than two million page views and more than 4,500 items, this blog provides news and commentary on public policy, business and economic issues related to the $3 billion California stem cell agency, officially known as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine(CIRM). David Jensen, a retired California newsman, has published this blog since January 2005. His email address is djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.

Monday, September 30, 2013

Directors of the $3 billion California stem cell agency meet next
week to consider changes in conflict of interest rules for the
persons who make virtually all the decisions on the hundreds of
applications for the cash that it hands out for research.

Details of the changes and their justification are not yet
publicly available for the meeting in Burlingame, Ca., on Oct. 9. The
only information that was posted on the CIRM Web site as of this
morning was this brief note from the meeting agenda:

“Request for consent to initiate rule-making to amend conflict
of interest regulations for non-ICOC members of the Grants Working
Group.”

ICOC is the abbreviation for the stem cell governing board,
whose members are required to publicly disclose many of their
financial interests.

The changes would affect the out-of-state scientists who score
grant applications during closed-door deliberations. The agency's
governing board, which has the ultimate legal authority for
application approval, has ratified 98 percent of the decisions by the
grant working group, according to the agency's own calculations.

The agency does not require the scientists to disclose publicly
either their economic or professional interests and has resisted
proposals for more transparency for years. The interests of
reviewers instead are disclosed privately to a limited number of
persons within the agency There does not appear to be a significant
effort to audit the disclosures for accuracy.

Questions about the legal necessity for public disclosure of grant
reviewers' interests have arisen as far back as 2007, including a recommendation by the state auditor that the agency seek an opinion
from the state attorney general on the matter. The auditor said,

“The
FPPC (the state's government ethics agency) believes that members of
working groups, who perform duties such as advising the committee on
standards and policy or evaluating grant applications and making
award recommendations to the committee, may need to be included in
the conflict-of-interest code. Specifically, the FPPC believes that,
under state regulations, working group members may act as decision
makers if they make substantive recommendations that are, over an
extended period, regularly approved without significant amendment or
modification by the committee. Thus, as decision makers, working
group members would need to be subject to the conflict-of-interest
code.”

“The recommendations of
the CIRM working groups have never been routinely and/or regularly
adopted by the ICOC. Until the time that such a pattern is detected,
the question you suggest we raise with the attorney general is
entirely hypothetical, and is therefore not appropriate for
submission. We will, however, continue to monitor approvals for such
a pattern and will reconsider our decision if one emerges."

Because of the closed door nature of the grant application review
process, conflict questions rarely surface publicly. Last spring,
however, the California Stem Cell Report reported conflict violations involving an internationally reknown scientist-reviewer in a $40
million grant round. The scientist, Lee Hood of Seattle, Wash., is a
close friend of one of the applicants, Irv Weissman of Stanford. They
also own property together in Montana.

As we reported at the time,

“The conflict was not discovered by
the agency during the review. It was raised by another reviewer at
the end of the review, which, for the first time in CIRM history,
failed to conclude with a decision supporting any of the proposals.
Reviewers' comments have been sent back to applicants with another
review scheduled for November. The agency said Hood will not take
part in that session.”

Hood was recruited as a reviewer by CIRM President Alan Trounson,
who has been a guest of Weissman at the Hood-Weissman ranch.
Sphere: Related Content

About Me

The California Stem Cell Report is the only nongovernmental website devoted solely to the $3 billion California stem cell agency. The report is published by David Jensen, who worked for 22 years for The Sacramento Bee in a variety of editing positions, including executive business editor and special projects editor. He was the primary editor on the 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning series, "The Monkey Wars" by Deborah Blum, which dealt with opposition to research on primates. Jensen served as a press aide in the 1974 campaign and first administration of Gov. Jerry Brown. (Time served: two years and one week.) He writes from his sailboat on the west coast of Mexico with occasional visits to land. Jensen began writing about the stem cell agency in 2005, noting that it is an unprecedented effort that uniquely combines big science, big business, big academia, big politics, religion, ethics and morality as well as life and death. The California Stem Cell Report has been identified as one of the best stem cell sites on the Internet. Its readership includes the media (both mainstream and science), a wide range of academic/research institutions globally, the NIH and California policy makers.